And, of course, since April 20 these have not been normal times. That's when human errors at BP's Deepwater Horizon Oil rig, 50 miles south of the delta, caused an explosion that killed 11 people and opened a gusher on the floor of the Gulf that has since sent 5.5 and 50 million gallons (depends on your expert) of crude toward our precious coastal estuaries -- with no end in sight.

This outrage threatens the most productive fish habitat in the lower 48 states. And it also threatens one of the largest, most fanatical fishing communities in the world.

And it was Barham who had to announce to different members of this community that they couldn't fish.

And then they could.

And then they couldn't. And then ...

I know how many phone calls and e-mails I've gotten about this on-again, off-again, maybe-sometime-and-maybe-never dance. I pitied Barham's eardrums.

Fishermen understand the issue. They know the oil spill contains lots of toxic stuff that can poison fish, that could cause serious harm to humans if consumed. But they don't understand why the east bank remained closed from April 30 until sunrise Saturday, while sections of the west bank that were closed after April 30 were then reopened.

The east bank fishery is huge, not just in terms of commercial shrimpers and crabbers, but in the tens of thousands of metro-area residents who sport fish in those marshes, hundreds of whom own camps from Slidell to Pointe a la Hache. Those investments, and those precious vacation days, were slowly slipping away -- even while the state admitted none of its samplings of fish and water showed any contamination from the oil spill.

So it was great news late Friday when Barham announced his agency had found a way to reopen the east bank.

And to give his eardrums a break, I'll pass on the reasons why the closure has lasted so long -- and why closures may happen again in the future -- indeed, any day now.

An area is closed to fishing when NOAA's projection of the spill path indicates that area has a good chance of seeing oil. On April 30, NOAA predicted the east bank could be inundated during the May 1-2 weekend. So acting on the advice of the Department of Health and the Department of Environmental Quality, the DWF closed all fishing in that region, including catch-and-release, even though samples at the time showed no contamination.

Closures in advance of positive samples are necessary because it takes five days for labs to return the results. That means if the area was left open until a positive sample was reported, contaminated seafood might already have been on private tables and in seafood markets for four days.

Those west bank areas were reopened because no sheens or oil were spotted in the days after the NOAA forecasts.

Barham had been trying to find ways of reopening the long-closed but never-contaminated east bank. He achieved that Friday -- but there is a possible fly in this healing ointment.

The dispersants BP has been using to break up the spill can be as toxic as crude oil. And for several days beginning a week ago, the company injected the chemicals on the sea floor -- the idea being, it said, to begin the break-up sooner.

The state objected and forced a halt, for good reasons. This technique has never been used before. No one knows where undersea currents might be spreading that dispersed oil, and no one knows how long dispersant chemicals would last in the Gulf and what harm they might be doing on the Gulf floor.

"Those chemicals are extremely toxic, and what the experts we have consulted have told us is that they can enter the whole food chain just by getting into the (bait species) the other fish feed on, " Barham said. "We know those chemicals are in the water column (in the Gulf). We know tar balls have washed up on some beaches where there were no surface slicks.

"So now we have to develop a testing protocol for those things in the interior marshes, too."

Later Friday the federal Environmental Protection Agency dismissed the state's concerns and gave BP the green light to resume the deep-sea injections.

That setback didn't stop the DWF from reopening many interior marshes that had been closed. But Barham knows the situation is literally blowing in the wind.

So anglers and other boaters are urged to keep a constant watch for updates at NOLA.com, and the DWF website.

The spill is morphing daily and will continue to grow until the gusher is shut.